Years it was said that we were going to end up with the Big Crunch. Then in the past decade or two, it was said that we’d end up with a heat death. Now it seems

Years it was said that we were going to end up with the Big Crunch. Then in the past decade or two, it was said that we’d end up with a heat death. Now it seems like we’re heading away from that direction. Naturally, if you were immersed in the actual research, I’m sure the question would have seemed a lot more unsolved than it was presented. But it wasn’t just presented this way by pop science books; even scientists, when talking to laymen, tend to oversimplify things to a degree that they can become misleading. We’ve seen this discussed when it comes to things like string theory and quantum mechanics. Too many times people are saying “this is what happens” when they should be saying “we have no idea, there are a bunch of different theories, but we fundamentally don’t know.” Whatever happens to the universe, it won’t happen for billions of years. What people think will happen today might not be what they think will happen in ten, a hundred, or a thousand years from now. The research is interesting, but I have to assume that any answer we have now could be completely wrong.